Hart’s recent UK trip leads her to pen book

Thursday

Nov 29, 2012 at 11:57 AMNov 29, 2012 at 12:01 PM

Cynthia Grau

Beverly Hart, assistant principal at Flanagan-Cornell High School, turned a summer trip to England into a book, detailing the adventures of her William Shakespeare doll during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.“Travels with Shakespeare: The Diamond Jubilee” chronicles all the stops on the trip, including the Shakespeare Theatre, Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle, the Tower of London, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen historic sites and may other celebrations for the Queen’s Jubilee. Hart was a part of a Canadian tour group that landed in England May 31 and stayed until June 10.Hart, who has taught Latin and various levels of English and literature classes for 45 years, has a special affinity to England and British literature.“I love Shakespeare and Chaucer — just many of the British writers. I just love anything British. I’m an anglophile and I have a very extensive collection of royalty items going back, even to Queen Victoria’s rule, and I have a lot on the current queen. I was even in London 10 years ago for her Golden Jubilee, so I bought a lot of stuff then,” she explained.The teacher said the highlight of her trip was the rehearsal for the Queen’s birthday, when luck was on her side and she had the chance to witness the event up close. She said even though the Queen wasn’t there, it was still quite the spectacle.“Our tour guide told us about it so three of us went down there and were going to watch this practice. We get in line with all these people and we get up to the head of the line and we find out we have to have tickets. We had no tickets. We turned around and were just planning to watch from the street. Lo and behold, some British people behind us start talking to us and they have tickets, but in the fine print on the back of the tickets, it says no denim allowed, and these people are wearing blue jeans, so they asked if we wanted their tickets, and they gave them to us,” she said. “We ran and got in and the seats were at the top of the bleachers, which was perfect because I could stand through the whole thing and videotape it. The military there is such a sight. They had the military bands come in and it was one of the highlights and it was so weird that we happened to luck out like that.“After arriving home, Hart didn’t immediately start working on the book. She said she didn’t plan on writing the book before she left, either. She took about three months, from August through October, to go through the entire process of having the book published and now that she has the final copy available, she said it was all about doing something she hadn’t done before.“One of the ladies on the tour was a retired teacher and she and I roomed together, so she told me about the website, blurb.com, because she had written a book. So that’s what I went to and it’s fairly easy once I got the hang of what I was doing,” she explained. “I like new challenges and I like to try new things and I thought, ‘let’s see if I can do this,’ and it was kind of fun.”She said the title of the book is a play on John Stinebeck’s “Travels with Charlie,” and if she does other trips with “Will,” as she affectionately refers to her Shakespeare doll, she will use the first part of the title, “Travels with” and name the second part of the title to go along with the destination, making it a series.Traveling with one of her three William Shakespeare dolls raised some eyebrows, but the finished product of the book was worth the effort.“When we went to Stratford, people looked at me strangely because I posed him for pictures. He went all over,” she said.Hart, who says she has been to England about 20 times, even sent a copy to the Queen.“I haven’t heard anything back and maybe I won’t, but I wanted her to have a copy,” she said.With her passion for all things British, some wonder if Hart would ever move there.“Students ask if I would ever live there and I don’t think I would, I just like to travel there. If I lived there it would almost lose its mystique,” she said.Hart is looking into making the book available online as well as in print and anyone interested in purchasing a copy can reach her at FCHS at 815-796-2291 or by e-mailing her at bhart@FCW74.org.